Mind Labyrinth

“Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.”Stephen Hawking

Mind Labyrinth is an interactive video installation, which was created while I was an artist-in-residence at WBmotion in Wittenberg, Germany. It combines my own voice with the voices of other artists at the residency and their thoughts on identity along with photos and video, which I took at the Lutherhaus and on the train to Wittenberg. The work is about identity and the boundaries that we create and which are created by internal and external influences in relation to language, borders, and nationalism.

​In my mind I am freeUnsettling as it may beI think about all of the things that happen during the dayand sometimes they build walls.I follow these paths that lead me nowhereand yet, they lead me everywhere.I hear all languages at once and uniquely, and yet, I am still me.I find the rhythm of things comfortingand yet, with each repetition,my identity diminishes just a little bit more.My mind is a labyrintha space where I can travelIn and outlost in its patternslost in its willingnessI find myself.In this moment there are treesforming walls around meI reach out my handsTouching themfeeling the texturethe scratchy surface of things.I movelost, blind, unable to understandhow the space is formed and where to turn.It is a blind effortwandering through this wildernessthere are forms in nature that repeat themselvesthat take us through a spiraltwisting and twistingeach time augmenting

and turning again,​​but here this is not a spiralthis is some other kind of form.Walls that build themselvesin corners and out of corners.Turning,twisting,forming again,splittingand then blocking.I wander through this labyrinththis part of my mindwhere all of the thingsthat I have learnedhave formed wallsthey’ve built something hereall the othersthe people on the outsideall of the things that we see in moralitythe things that we see in societythey are herereflecting meand I am wanderingthrough this labyrinth in my mind.I touch the wallshoping for something openfor an opportunityfor a windowa place where light can falla place where light can penetratesomething to lead meinto another reality a universe that is me.